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Monday, August 20, 2007

Celebrating One Million Hits with Vanilla Bean Cupcakes and Chocolate Cupcakes

If you haven't notice the side bar counter, I'm proud to announce that we have achieved one million hits to date! Phew! Thanks for all your support in clicking on the site, keep it up and hopefully you continue to enjoy the blog entries. To celebrate the momentous occasion, I thought cupcakes would be appropriate.

I have been hankering for a good buttery cupcake ever since I saw the pastel ones in Bisou. Knowing bought ones won't really contain butter but some artificial spread, I decided to make my own. Using the recipes I had learnt in Singapore, I made two types - Vanilla Bean Cupcakes and Chocolate Cupcakes. The Vanilla Bean one was my favourite - the crumb of the buttery cake was not too fine or too big. It was extremely buttery and fragrant with vanilla. Incidentally I noticed how the Queen's vanilla bean paste from Australia is not as good as the Nielsen Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste I used this time round.

Instead of the usual butter and icing sugar type cream, I used the Swiss Meringue Buttercream method we were taught in class. This made a much creamier and smooth buttercream. I found it a bit too sweet hence I decided not to pipe swirls on the cupcakes but settled for stars instead. As you can see piping is not my forte at all, I just have to keep practising to get it perfect. To keep it simple, the ones which I piped swirls were just topped with Valrhona Crunchy Chocolate Pearls. My cake making wasn't too perfect either, I had overfilled my chocolate ones hence they spilled over the paper cups. I totally misjudged the recipe as it seems to expand more hence 1/2 filled batter was much better vs 2/3 filled batter. For the chocolate buttercream, I used melted Valrhona chocolate 55% cocoa mass which was not very bittersweet but gave a slight chocolate aroma. For the vanilla ones, I added vanilla bean paste to the buttercream hence the tiny black dots in the cream.

Congrats on the big hit!!! Would appreaciate if you send me recipes you use for your cupcake icings! So far I use the cream cheese icing, buttercream and royal icing... trying to collect a few more good ones!